


Cure a Rainy Day

by NervousAsexual



Series: The Empath [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Depression, Dysthymia, Episode: s03e08 The Empath, Implied/Referenced Suicide, OKAY., One Shot, Sad Headcanon, just fair warning, okay?, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 08:24:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7353325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-The Empath, Bones has a lot of thinking to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cure a Rainy Day

After an entire solar system went up into nothingness he was the one who crept back to his quarters and cried in the dark, and nobody would have blamed him. They wouldn't have asked, would have assumed they knew why, but nobody would have guessed it was because he was so close, so close and still everything went wrong.  
  
He'd been wobbly on his feet when they beamed back up, not sure how much of what happened was real and how much was a dream. He followed Jim and Spock to the bridge because his mind was too foggy to think of what else to do. Everyone else seemed happy, and proud, so he reflected that back at them as best as he could.  
  
"Lucky break, eh, doctor?" Sulu said to him.  
  
"Hmm?" He hadn't been listening, but staring at Sulu's uniform. Hadn't his blazer been yellow? Well, it was still yellow, but hadn't it been... yellower?  
  
Someone put a drink in his hand and he took a swig and assumed it was water, dull, flavorless water. It wasn't until much later, when he looked for a place to put the glass down, that he realized someone had gone through the trouble of fixing him a mint julep. He drank down the dregs and still tasted nothing.

There was a disconnect somewhere, frayed wires in the memory banks, because he didn't remember coming back and curling up on his bed, fully clothed and crying like a child.  
  
The recording that played now in the back of his mind, the soundtrack to holding the pillow on his face and wishing, is two lines that he hadn't paid much attention to at the time. "Their will to survive is great," one had said, and the other responded, "They love life greatly to struggle so."  
  
How could a species so brilliant and so clever be so very, very wrong?  
  
So he didn't rank highly. So critical mission decisions weren't his to make. As the head doctor on a starship in endless empty space that hardly mattered. This time it had counted. The one time it mattered, they took away his decision. And for that, Kirk was a hero.  
  
It could have gone brilliantly. Maybe not quickly, but on Minara II, so far from home, that was a sacrifice he was willing to make. After all, he could have been a hero and never have had to struggle again. The Vians would have killed him, Gem would have been afraid to touch him, but Jim and Spock would have lived and he would have gotten what he always wanted in the back of his mind. As they'd so precisely summed it up, there was an 87% chance it all could have played out exactly the way he wanted. They hadn't, and he hadn't, factored in the strength of human emotion.  
  
Instead here he was, crying out every last bit of energy he had and making wishes that would have baffled Spock and horrified Kirk. Maybe it was dehydration making his mind fuzzy, but he felt like he could ask for anything and so receive if only he weren't as empty as space inside. "I think I can cure a rainy day," he'd said once to Kirk. He must have _felt_ that way once--why else would he have said it?--but as far back as he could remember he couldn't recall feeling a damn thing.  
  
After a while all his tears were burning his face and he was covered with tears and snot, and he would rather have kissed the creature from M-113 than move so far as to roll over in bed. Everything was terrible, and everything hurt.  
  
But in the morning he would get up and dress himself, eat in the canteen--it didn't matter what because there was no taste to the food, just a series of unpleasant sensations in his mouth--and carry on the way he always had. Not because he so greatly loved life, but because he knew no other way.

**Author's Note:**

> I read in his biography that The Empath was DeForest Kelley's favorite episode, and it's mine as well. My sad headcanon is that McCoy is such a grumpy character because (like me) he struggles with dythymia, which is basically low-grade depression that never really goes away. So, that's why he's so eager to sacrifice himself in the Empath: it's a way out of all the mental struggles without having to face the judgement people who actually commit suicide do.
> 
> Also, I guess technically you can consider this a companion piece to my other sad-headcanon Star Trek piece, "Accidents Happen." I'm just full of sad Star Trek thoughts, I guess.


End file.
